Billy’s angry. Jackie, his mother, is floundering. They both need to grow. Enter social worker Len, who persuades Jackie to join an arts project on the estate. There’s an aborigine proverb:

‘those who lose dreaming are lost’; but once the video camera prompts Jackie to start dreaming, things start to unravel for Billy. He sees betrayal in his mother, but also in Len, who is growing too close to her. It’s a situation made worse by the fact that his friends, Bunny and Nicola, also see new possibilities for their lives. Something has to give.

THE CAGE was nominated for 2007 Meyer-Whitworth Award

As a lovely coda to the beautiful experience of this production, Motley Theatre Design Course took THE CAGE as a script to work on: twelve designer/director pairs each created their own interpretation of the play. It was a real inspiration to watch them at work and the end results were amazing – it was like Christmas for a writer. There was an exhibition of the work in the Paint Frame at the National Theatre.

Fabrice Serafino’s beautiful set design for the original production can be seen at: